Question by james_kelleher · Apr 14, 2020 at 02:27 PM · networking photon

How do I get photon to broadcast a signal to trigger an event?

EDIT: I found a solution using RPCs

I'm building a little multiplayer game. There's an event that, when triggered by one player, I would like all other players to see as well. Specifically, I would like an object to play an animation when a player presses an action button near it. However, I'm hitting this problem:

Player 1 starts the game, creates a room and joins it. Then, Player 2 starts the game and joins the room. Both players approach the object. When Player 1 presses their action button, the animation plays for both players. However, when Player 2 presses the action button, only they see the animation play.

My guess is that when Player 2 joins, their stream is prepared to receive the necessary data from Player 1, but Player 1's stream is not set up to broadcast to Player 2. How can I fix this? I thought about calling PhotonNetwork.Instantiate, but I don't want to create a new object for all players every time a player joins. Maybe I could delete objects if !PhotonView.IsMine, but I figure there must be a better way.

I've attached the code for reference:

 using Photon.Pun;
 using UnityEngine;
 
 public class FountainController : MonoBehaviour, IPunObservable {
     // flag that allows player to interact with the fountain
     bool playerInTrigger;
 
     // receives signal to play the sparkle animation
     bool receivedSparkle;
 
     // sends a signal to play the sparkle animation
     bool sendSparkle;
 
     Animator animator;
 
     void Start () {
         // initialize variables
         playerInTrigger = false;
         receivedSparkle = false;
         sendSparkle = false;
 
         animator = this.GetComponent<Animator> ();
     }
     void Update () {
         if (receivedSparkle) {
             // play animation if received a broadcasted signal
             print ("received a sparkle");
             animator.SetBool ("PlayAnimation", true);
             receivedSparkle = false;
         } else if (playerInTrigger && Input.GetKeyDown ("right shift")) {
             // play animation if triggered by player
             animator.SetBool ("PlayAnimation", true);
 
             // broadcast the signal to trigger other players' animations
             sendSparkle = true;
         }
     }
 
     // used in Animation to end the clip
     void TurnOffAnimation () {
         animator.SetBool ("PlayAnimation", false);
     }
 
     // allow the event to happen if player's character enters trigger
     void OnTriggerEnter2D (Collider2D other) {
         if (!other.gameObject.GetComponent<PlayerController> ()) {
             return;
         }
 
         PhotonView pv = other.GetComponent<PhotonView> ();
         if (!pv.IsMine && PhotonNetwork.IsConnected) {
             return;
         }
 
         playerInTrigger = true;
     }
 
     // prevent the event from happening if player's character leaves trigger
     void OnTriggerExit2D (Collider2D other) {
         if (!other.gameObject.GetComponent<PlayerController> ()) {
             return;
         }
 
         PhotonView pv = other.GetComponent<PhotonView> ();
         if (!pv.IsMine && PhotonNetwork.IsConnected) {
             return;
         }
 
         playerInTrigger = false;
     }
 
     public void OnPhotonSerializeView (PhotonStream stream, PhotonMessageInfo messageInfo) {
         if (stream.IsWriting) {
             stream.SendNext (sendSparkle);
             if (sendSparkle) {
                 // don't send multiple signals to play animation
                 sendSparkle = false;
             }
         } else {
             receivedSparkle = (bool) stream.ReceiveNext ();
         }
     }
 }

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